Red Hat Open Source CommunityTag: Eventshttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2018-05-22T10:25:00-04:00Red Hat, Inc.Lights... Camera... Tech!http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/02/lights-camera-tech/2018-02-16T08:30:00-05:002018-02-16T09:10:00-05:00Brian Proffitt<p><img alt="video camera" width="250" height="166" src="/images/blog/camera.jpg?1518791383" /> Did you ever have one of those weeks where you look back at your life choices and wonder why you did what you did?</p>
<p>Oh, did I have one of those weeks.</p>
<p>It started when I discovered that the organizers of FOSDEM were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/fosdemtalks/videos">posting their video content on YouTube</a> this year—something they have not always done in the past.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This discovery quickly got me excited, because this year I was planning on asking their permission to post the videos of our ecosystem participants' presentations on our own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxei_9nzc8o5-WqMmaQtqw">Red Hat Community YouTube channel</a>. The videos are all under the Creative Commons license anyway, but I always like to be courteous and at least give a content provider a heads up when I am about to re-use that much material. That they were on YouTube already made my job a lot easier.</p>
<p>With a list of Red Hat and upstream project presenters in hand, off I went to our YouTube channel to find… nearly nothing. A grand total of three videos had been uploaded, and they were years old. What in my head was a fairly active video channel was dormant and stale.</p>
<p>This is on me, of course. One of my primary responsibilities on my team is making sure the team's social media channels are active. Clearly, I had let this slide in a huge way. But no longer. The dust is being shaken off our video channel with a new plan to provide linked and original content about the community technologies on which Red Hat and our many upstream projects are working.</p>
<p>If you <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxei_9nzc8o5-WqMmaQtqw">visit the channel</a> today, now you will find playlists from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuc-VIfmlz0lZSTHfS2tUf5en_i49Z_-">FOSDEM</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuc-VIfmlz2sKw3zXGLWzrCf8MQ-Q7qw">DevConf.cz</a>, and the most recent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuc-VIfmlz1hWPhZlVMQXZfPh7T2c5X3">CentOS Dojo in Brussels</a>. There's more coming, too, as the word is out to all of the upstream projects that we are looking for any video content they might have to share.</p>
<p>So please stop by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxei_9nzc8o5-WqMmaQtqw">the channel</a>, and better yet, click on Subscribe so you will see the regular updates to this newly revitalized content outlet!</p>
<p><em>Image provided by <a href="https://pixabay.com/en/users/MandCstudios-5882606/">MandCStudios</a> under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en">CC0 1.0 Universal</a> license.</em></p>
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Notes from the FOSDEM Community DevRoomhttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/02/notes-from-the-fosdem-community-devroom/2018-02-13T08:30:00-05:002018-02-14T08:59:00-05:00Leslie Hawthorn<p><img alt="FOSDEM Logo" width="200" height="200" src="/images/blog/FOSDEM_logo.png?1518535665" /> During FOSDEM, I had the privilege of co-chairing the Community DevRoom with Laura Czajkowski of Couchbase for the second time. We got a much larger room this year (80 seats, up from 40 last year) and still had a packed house the entire day with a queue for seats reaching down the stairs for all talks.</p>
<p>We were also honored to hear from the organizers that they received unsolicited feedback from several attendees that the DevRoom was one of the best at the event and had a great mix of talks for both seasoned open source contributors and folks who were old hands in the tech world but new to open source or to FOSDEM.</p>
<p>You can check out <a href="https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/community_devroom/">all the talks</a>, and videos have been posted for each one.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I think most of the talks are useful to anyone in the community space, but I'll call out two(ish) for being the greatest interest to readers.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong><a href="https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/community_explaining_faq/">You've got some explaining to do. So use an FAQ!</a></strong> Useful views into how FAQ documents allow internal teams to reach consensus, particularly on contentious topics, before informing people outside of the company about decisions. Also wonderful for Simon Phipps and Rich Sands' colorful insights into the process of releasing Java under the GPL whilst at SUN Microsystems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><a href="https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/community_why_people_dont_contribute_to_your_project/">Why people don't contribute to your open source project</a></strong>. From Mike McQuaid, the maintainer of the highly popular Homebrew project. Reviews the process from moving users into the contributor pipeline and common barriers to entry for contributions. Mike also talks a bit about the GitHub maintainers community, which is worth learning about if you've never heard of it.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>So, I said I'd choose two talks, but I fibbed. I selected two more that are of general interest but particularly interesting to two different community audiences, engineering people managers and new employees who may not have much experience with open source projects.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong><a href="https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/community_passing_the_batton_foss_leadership/">Passing the Baton: Succession Planning for FOSS Leadership</a></strong> <em>(for engineering people managers)</em>. From VM Vicky Brasseur, FOSS old hand and Engineering Director/Product Manger extraordinaire, this talk delves into the process for planning to reduce a project's bus factor. It also goes through common hurdles when doing succession planning and how just going through this process can reduce maintainer burnout. An incredibly worthwhile talk for anyone whose teams ship product, as we all understand folks take new jobs, decide to retire, etc. Vicky's advice is just sensible business practice for any company creating software products.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><a href="https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/community_decision_making_why_how/">Asychronous Decision Making - why and how</a></strong> <em>(for those newer to open source)</em>. Bertrand Delacretz is a Principal Scientist with Adobe Research, another FOSS old hand and an Apache Software Foundation Board Member since the late 90s. (It was also his first FOSDEM!)<br />For those who are newer to open source or how Red Hat gets things done, this talk is an invaluable view into our corporate culture and workflow. If you're not used to reading long emails or waiting a few days for a decision to get made as you work across global time zones, Bertrand's talk does an excellent job educating you on both how async decision making works. Further, he carefully illustrates why async decision making is actually more powerful than either keeping everyone online 24 hours a day (hello, burnout!) or leaving the decision making concentrated in the hands of only a few whose work hours overlap well (hello, demotivation due to feelings of disenfranchisement or lack of ownership in one's work).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Last but not least, I will quickly echo the sentiments of all the other folks reflecting on their own FOSDEM trips—it's barely controlled chaos, in the good way, with incredibly fruitful opportunities to meet with community folks and our co-workers that we rarely see in person. We had numerous requests to make the Community DevRoom a two-day affair next year, and both Laura and I are trying to figure out how we could make that happen without sacrificing a day to engaging in the great discussions we have in the hallway track.</p>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
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DevConf.us Makes Its Debuthttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/02/devconfus-makes-its-debut/2018-02-08T08:25:00-05:002018-02-08T09:50:45-05:00Brian Proffitt<p><img alt="DevConf.us Logo" width="250" height="250" src="/images/blog/devconfus2018.png?1518102284" /> I hear what you're thinking: it's another developer conference. Because we don't have enough of those. But the inaugural edition of DevConf.us should prove to be more than just another developer event.</p>
<p>That's because its sibling event, DevConf.cz in Brno, Czech Republic, is nothing like your run-of-the-mill dev conference. So why should this latest offshoot conform to that mold, either?</p>
<p>Held on the campus of Boston University from August 17-19, 2018, <a href="https://devconf.cz/us/">DevConf.us</a> follows in the footsteps of its original event, as well as its other companion event, <a href="https://devconf.cz/in/">DevConf.in</a> in Bangalore, India, and brings unique flavor of conference to the shores of North America.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I've been to DevConf.cz a few times, and I have always found the show to be full of more interesting, non-vendor-y talks, as well as an intimate setting within the halls of the Brno University of Technology. But it took a conversation with Red Hat Platform Engineer Langdon White and Global Engineering Director Hugh Brock to help me understand exactly why the format of the DevConf events resonates with so many attendees.</p>
<p>"One of the things that's unique about DevConf.cz is that it has a few big name speakers, but really focuses on new speakers," White told me this week. This model works, White added, because you can draw a bigger crowd with the "known" speakers, and provide a big debut audience for developers who might not otherwise have had a chance to publicly speak. And, because DevConf events are typically located near major Red Hat engineering offices, the audiences tend to me more friendly towards newcomer speakers.</p>
<p>By hosting DevConf events at academic facilities, the conferences can also engage local university students with open source, White continued. Another benefit that he has seen as DevConf.cz is the opportunities for customers to meet and talk to some of Red hat's more technical employees.</p>
<p>White thinks it will take time for DevConf.us to mature enough to achieve that last benefit, but he predicts it will happen eventually.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Brock and White are busily overseeing the launch of DevConf.us, happy to see nearly 20 proposed presentations already from the <a href="http://bit.ly/devconfus-18-cfp">open CFP</a>, and working with hosts at Boston University to ensure a great inaugural event. The DevConf.us organizers are also working hard to increase diversity and inclusion at the new conference. White says they are debating the implementation of a double-blind presentation selection process that should help diversity at DevConf.us.</p>
<p>The trick will be ensuring that the conference's mission of highlighting new speakers is also upheld. Currently the selection committee is considering the addition of a point-system layer that will also let judges give weight to new vs. veteran speakers. The new-speaker emphasis is something organizers very much want to keep in place for DevConf.us.</p>
<p>"It gives the audience exposure to things they have never seen before," White said. Also to that end, Brock and White added that they would love to see more topic submissions around the areas of user experience (UX) and quality engineering (QE) in open source, as they feel these topics are bit underrepresented at this time.</p>
<p>Given the wide range of topics and the flavor of past DevConf events, Boston-area developers are encouraged to participate or attend the new DevConf.us this August. It promises to be something unique.</p>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
<a href="http://community.redhat.com/">community.redhat.com</a>.
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FOSDEM is Community at its Puresthttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/02/fosdem-is-community-at-its-purest/2018-02-03T11:45:00-05:002018-02-03T12:41:23-05:00Brian Proffitt<p><img alt="Fedora Booth" width="250" height="188" src="/images/blog/Fedorabooth.jpg?1517682043" /> If you have never been to FOSDEM on the ULB Solbosch campus in Brussels before, let me try to sum it up in one sentence for you: over 8,000 free and open source developers and enthusiasts all seeking to learn as much as possible in as many ways as possible.</p>
<p>That really doesn't do it justice. With more detail, I can also tell you that it is crowded, loud, and certainly populated by the most politically and socially diverse people I have ever seen in one place.</p>
<p>And I would not trade any visit for the world.</p>
<p></p>
<p><img alt="FOSDEM Keynote" width="800" height="373" src="/images/blog/FOSDEM2018keynote.jpg?1517682043" /><br />
<em>FOSDEM Keynote Audience</em></p>
<p>FOSDEM is an event that is full of contradictions to me and many of my fellow community managers. At its heart, it is an event that is comprised of exactly the right kind of people we want to meet: new developers and sysadmins who are trying to get a handle on this thing known as free and open source software (FLOSS).</p>
<p>At the same time, there are some people we could just as easily avoid: people coming in with chips on their shoulders and intent on delivering their complaints about what they perceive as something wrong with FLOSS. Mind you, it's not the complaints about <em>our</em> software that's the problem. Indeed, we welcome those conversations. How else do we learn?</p>
<p>No, it's the people who come to us and complain about what <em>other</em> projects are doing who are the concern. Many's the time people have walked up to me to complain about Project X or Y, thinking to have in me a sympathetic ear to conspiratorially trade gossip.</p>
<p>Actually? No.</p>
<p>We understand that there is competition for users and developers in the FLOSS world. But making gains at the expense of others is not the way to go. At the end of the day, FLOSS is about collaboration. Bad-mouthing people and projects ius just a fast way to close doors, not open them.</p>
<p>Plus, if you're complaining to <em>us</em> about how another project is doing, how does that help the other project? They will have less of a chance to improve. If you have already tried to talk to them, try again. Escalate the issue. Get an answer. Try every avenue before giving up.</p>
<p>If this does not work, then move to another solution. Be ready to explain what it is you need as clearly as possible to the new project.</p>
<p>FOSDEM is, if anything, all about choice. Make you own, but never at the expense of others.</p>
<p><em>Photos by Brian Proffitt and Tuomas Kuosmanen.</em></p>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
<a href="http://community.redhat.com/">community.redhat.com</a>.
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Events Are Hard, And They May Be Getting Harderhttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/06/events-are-hard/2017-06-22T12:24:00-04:002017-06-22T14:55:00-04:00Brian Proffitt<p><img alt="Hallway Track" width="250" height="141" src="/images/blog/red-hat-summit.jpg?1498158699" /> Summer is always a busy time in tech conference season, especially for the Open Source and Standards team. In the past few weeks, we have had team members in Japan, China, and Germany. Other community teams are busy too—today <a href="https://www.ansible.com/ansiblefest">AnsibleFest</a> happened in London, and last week the oVirt team was busy helping out with <a href="http://il.pycon.org/2017/">PyCon Israel</a>.</p>
<p>There's a little bit of a lull coming up, and several of us are taking breathers as we recover from the challenges of international travel. Right now, those challenges are fairly well-known: jet lag, language barriers, cultural differences… but there seems to be an uncertain future on the horizon, a future where travel may be potentially complicated by much greater forces, such as climate and geopolitical change.</p>
<p></p>
<h2 id="reply-hazy-try-again">Reply Hazy, Try Again</h2>
<p>Watching the news these days seems to always be an exercise in watching chaos, as governments and world leaders make decisions that seemingly fly in the face of common sense. Distrust and fear seem more prevalent every day, and for those of us that work in community, it's particularly ironic that we might be living in a period of history where the world is coming farther apart rather than coming together.</p>
<p>It does not matter which end of the political spectrum you sit—fear of opposing viewpoints has gotten many of us to the point where we won't even <em>listen</em> anymore, let alone come to a consensus.</p>
<p>Alongside that is increasing evidence that the natural environment around us all is changing dramatically. A hotter planet means disrupted food and water supplies, previously habitable areas rendered near- to totally inhospitable, and (as we have seen in the southeastern U.S.) a direct effect on air travel. As a pilot, I know the problem of density altitude is always prevalent in the summer, as warmer air is essentially thinner than cooler air. This effect is rather unnerving for a Cessna trying to claw its way to altitude in the Midwest… at higher elevations, it's a no-fly limitation.</p>
<p>If these conditions continue to manifest, this will effect community building, too.</p>
<h2 id="local-before-global">Local Before Global</h2>
<p>It has always been evident that a big part of community building is getting together with fellow community members in real life. Whether a local meetup or an international event, open source projects tend to thrive when people get together and pool their ideas and creativity.</p>
<p>Social bonds are strengthened too, as shared experiences like a tire-squealing taxi driver in Chicago or accidentally playing a real-life game of Frogger on a Dublin street bring people together just as much as collaboration on a shared bit of code in a repo.</p>
<p>But if travel is about to be disrupted, then we may have hard choices ahead about how and when we journey to larger events.</p>
<p>This is why it is important to start focusing on the local-level events now. Local events are important for other reasons, of course, not the least of which is that locally organized events tend to being communities more strength and resiliency than "top-down" national and regional events that happen less frequently. So even if the world does not drastically change, you're <a href="https://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/03/community-of-one/">still focusing on a worthy goal</a>.</p>
<p>Moving forward, OSAS and Red Hat will be working on just this type of plan: guidance and resources for communities of any size and shape to host their own local community events. This (euphemistic) "meetup-in-a-box" will enable open source projects to seek out and gather people who share your passion.</p>
<p>Maybe you believe open source can save the world… and maybe you don't. But bringing people together is always better than keeping them apart. And if that helps more people understand those who are different than them, then I'd call that a win.</p>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
<a href="http://community.redhat.com/">community.redhat.com</a>.
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Three Best Features of Open Source Eventshttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/06/three-best-features-of-open-source-events/2017-06-06T09:50:00-04:002017-06-06T11:05:11-04:00Rich Bowen<p><img alt="Hackathon" width="250" height="167" src="/images/blog/Hackathon.jpg?1496762618" /> As part of Stormy’s ongoing blog challenge, here’s my take on "Three best features of open source events."</p>
<p></p>
<h2 id="the-hackathon">1. The Hackathon</h2>
<p>While there is considerable evidence that the term “hackathon” should be avoided (No, I can’t find the article right now. I’ll keep looking), the collaborative space at an event is, in my opinion, the most important part of an open source event.</p>
<p>Open source events are educational, of course. You can attend a talk and learn things. But most of the information that you need to learn is available, free, online. So to me the most important part of an event is the opportunity to meet and collaborate with the other people on the project.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://drbacchus.com/three-best-features-of-open-source-events/">Read more</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Image courtesy of <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hackathon_TLV_2013_-_(48).jpg">Liran Mimon</a>, under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> license.</em></p>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
<a href="http://community.redhat.com/">community.redhat.com</a>.
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Blog Challenge--Open Source Community Eventshttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/05/blog-meme-open-source-community-events/2017-05-22T22:17:54-04:002017-05-22T22:33:50-04:00Stormy Peters<p><img alt="Summit" width="640" height="360" src="/images/blog/rh_booth.jpg?1478100396" /> Last month we ran a community blogging challenge on <a href="https://opensource.com/users/stormypeters">opensource.com</a>. People really enjoyed both the writing prompts as well as hearing what others have to stay. Many expressed disappointment that the blogging challenge has ended, so we decided to bring it back! We want to hear what you have to say! We want to make sure that open source software communities have access to the best practices across all projects.</p>
<p>This week the focus is on events! For many of you, May was event month. ApacheCon, Open Stack Summit, OSCON, OSCAL, Read the Docs, Red Hat Summit, and PyCon are just a few of the events in May. So while you are thinking of them, what advice do you have for other open source software communities?</p>
<p></p>
<h2 id="challenge-questions">Challenge Questions</h2>
<ul>
<li>Should your community have a project event? If so, who should attend?</li>
<li>What’s your favorite example of a cross communities event?</li>
<li>Who from your community should be attending open source events?</li>
<li>Three types of events that every community member should attend</li>
<li>How do you manage travel funds for people that need them?</li>
<li>Three best features of open source events</li>
<li>Your three favorite events</li>
<li>The conference you’d recommend to all new open source community members</li>
</ul>
<p>We heard that you all are busy and good ideas take some time to generate, so we lengthened the blogging window to two weeks. Write about events by the end of the day June 1st to be included in this round! Just blog on your preferred blogging platfrom and then reference your blog post on Twitter with the #osscommunities hashtag!</p>
<p>We collected a lot of great content on the <a href="/knowledge/">Knowledge</a> section of the Red Hat Community site and we will continue to link to any #osscommunities blog posts there.</p>
<p><em>Image courtesy of Rich Bowen.</em></p>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
<a href="http://community.redhat.com/">community.redhat.com</a>.
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Down in Taz-Mania--Red Hat at LCA 2017 Hobart Part IIIhttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/02/lca-part-3/2017-02-16T13:01:54-05:002017-02-16T12:15:21-05:00Steven Ellis<p><img alt="Tuz logo" width="125" height="125" src="/images/blog/lca2017/tuz.png?1489516001" /> For some background I recommend you catch the earlier postings</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/02/lca-part-1/">Down in Taz-Mania--Red Hat at LCA 2017 Hobart Part I</a></li>
<li><a href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/02/lca-part-2/">Down in Taz-Mania--Red Hat at LCA 2017 Hobart Part II</a></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/31592064373/in/album-72157679336942295/%20"><img alt="Nadia LCA" class="image-1 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/598/31592064373_cdec927971_b.jpg" style="width: 260px; height: 173px; float: right;" /></a>Suitably refreshed after our conference dinner, our Thursday Keynote was Nadia Eghbal from GitHub. Her talk <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/106/">Consider the Maintainer</a> looked at some of the issues when projects we all rely on may have a single maintainer or a single committer. If your organisation or project deeply relies on other Open Source projects you need to look at how you can support them, otherwise there is a potentially huge risk if the maintainer walks away.</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="link-titled" href="https://lwn.net/Articles/712215/" title="https://lwn.net/Articles/712215/">Consider the maintainer [LWN.net]</a> </li>
<li><a class="link-titled" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2AR1owg0ao" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2AR1owg0ao">Consider the Maintainer - YouTube</a> </li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<h2 id="day-4---thursday-19th-january">Day 4 - Thursday 19th January</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/31591205063/in/album-72157675600468404/"><img alt="LCA 2017 David" class="j-img-floatstart image-2 jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/587/31591205063_f19088c1e9_b.jpg" style="width: 240px; height: 180px; float: left;" /></a>My first session of the day was <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/98/">The Vulkan Graphics API - what it means for Linux</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOlwgtuSlKQ">video</a>) David Airlie . Some of David's previous LCA talks are very technical on the specifics of graphics drivers, but this session was very accessible for anyone interested in what Vulkan is and the current state of development across a range of graphics chip-sets.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> <br /><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/32362871056/in/album-72157675600468404/"><img alt="" class="image-3 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/506/32362871056_89c2a88cbb_b.jpg" style="width: 216px; height: 162px; float: right;" /></a>From a community perspective it was great to see a large contingent from SuSE this year, no doubt helped by team member Tim being based in Hobart. Lars Marowsky-Brée presented a session on <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/83/">Building reliable Ceph clusters</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRWVZXxRN8">video</a>). This opened with great ground work on how to approach Ceph, before I had to nip out of the room due to a phone call. Thanks to the wonderful AV team I was able to finish the talk later and catch Lars covering some of the challenges they face around firmware and driver conflicts.</p>
<p>Post-lunch, I was intrigued by Rob Landley's session <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/29/">Optimizing a new processor architecture</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0milqmt4ao">video</a>). I'd worked on development tools for the SuperH architecture in the UK in the late 90s. This CPU architecture now out of patent and the <a href="http://j-core.org">http://j-core.org</a> project is developing clean room implementations of a sh2 compatible SoC. For anyone into CPU architectures and how to how to modernize older architectures this is a must see talk. I'll warn you though, Rob has a lot of content to cover in a short period.</p>
<p>I intended to attend the talk on Power Management next but got distracted by the "Corridor Track." One benefit of a conference like LCA is the range of speakers, keynotes and attendees from all over the world. Sometimes so much can be learnt about a technology or industry just by joining in a discussion or two. The Wrest Point had some great space for catching up with people, or sometimes simply catching a breath of fresh air on the board-walk. Any opportunity to hear Matthew Wilcox and Paul McKenney "discuss" the Kernel should not be missed</p>
<p>My next talk selection took me a little by surprise as I'd originally intended on submitting around the same topic. About a year ago I changed my car to a Mazda that comes with a Linux based entertainment system. Joel Stanley's <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/35/">/sys/class/gpio/Parking Brake: Hacking my car</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3NKMi_f21Q">video</a>) covered some ground I'd investigated myself, including a very simple process to access the system as root. Sadly Mazda haven't responded to my Source Code Request at this stage, and have even taken steps to secure root access into the device. I have a feeling I'll be collaborating with Joel over the next year.</p>
<p>I closed the day with <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/33/">At-rest Encryption in OpenStack Swift</a> John Dickinson &lt;/span&gt;<span>(<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRRbogFZEcU">video</a>)</span><span>. John covered this interesting topic in a very accessible way, and clearly presented some of the challenges they are trying to solve with their approach to encryption within Swift.</span></p>
<h3 id="to-catch-later">To Catch Later</h3>
<ul>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/15/">Rust 101</a> E. Dunham </span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/21/">Network Protocol Analysis for IoT</a> Devices Jonathan Oxer </span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/17/">A Practical Guide to Compliance with the GNU GPL</a> Bradley M. Kuhn, Karen M. Sandler </span></li>
<li>The Future of Power Management in Linux Rafael J. Wysocki</li>
<li>I am your user. Why do you hate me? Donna Benjamin</li>
<li>GPU Accelerated JPEG Rendering Nathan Egge</li>
<li>Surviving the Next 30 Years of Free Software Karen M. Sandler</li>
<li>Rootless Containers with runC Aleksa Sarai</li>
</ul>
<p>For the videos take a look at <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fuser%2Flinuxconfau2017%2Fvideos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/linuxconfau2017/videos</a></p>
<p>No official events so a trip into Hobart with old and new friends and dinner for the evening.</p>
<h2 id="day-5---friday-20th-january">Day 5 - Friday 20th January</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/31609250693/in/album-72157675724783773/"><img alt="R@ml" class="j-img-floatend image-4 jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/531/31609250693_0f8f599646_b.jpg" style="width: 357px; height: 238px; float: right;" /></a>It isn't often were you are lost for words on how to describe a keynote. I've seen <a href="https://twitter.com/r0ml">r0ml</a> (Robert Lefkowitz) keynote at OSCON in the past so had fairly high expectations, all of which were exceeded. Watch the video, read the <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/712376/">LWN article</a> or take a look at <a href="https://rodger.donaldson.gen.nz/archives/2017/01/lca-2017-day-5/">Rodger Donaldson's Blog</a> as I was seriously concerned I'd have a <em>cache full error</em> and flush from my brain everything I'd seen over the previous four days. It makes for a thrilling ride and a session in serious need of a re-watch. I'll warn you though, their might be the odd <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin">MacGuffin</a> along the way.</p>
<p>Once again the discussions in the corridor after morning tea proved to be to interesting, plus I had to make sure we had a suitable space for the Jobs BoF at lunchtime.</p>
<p>Lunchtime was also the <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/wiki/conference/jobs/">Jobs BoF</a>, another linux.conf.au regular. Once again co-organised by myself and Tim Serong from SuSE. The first three commercial organizations to speak were SuSE, Red Hat, and Canonical, which was kinda awesome, closely followed by Google, Apple, and Fastmail.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/32413309775/"><img alt="" class="image-5 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/465/32413309775_bc2c2cb2c7_b.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 187px; float: right;" /></a>After Lunch I had to see <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/56/">The Business of Community</a> by VM (Vicky) Brasseur (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOlwgtuSlKQ">video</a>). Vicky is well respected in the Open Source community and presented perspectives on how to engage / build / develop / improve your relationship with communities and why this matters</p>
<p>My last session from the main program was <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/45/">Designing a Race Car with Open Source Tools</a> by Dave Chinner. Dave traditionally talks about filesystems, in particular xfs, where he is a kernel maintainer. Instead we got a journey on the pain/pleasure of rebuilding his race car and trying to use Open Source tools and principles where possible.</p>
<h3 id="lightning-talks">Lightning Talks</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/32270132722/"><img alt="" class="image-6 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/622/32270132722_38c1e0f273_b.jpg" style="width: 259px; height: 173px; float: right;" /></a>Lightning talks (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNmfD1Lb7M">video</a>) are another LCA favourite and this year were schedule just before the conference close. It is hard to choose a out of the very wide range of awesome content, but special mentions to</p>
<ul>
<li><span>Rusty Russel + Blockchain (see right)</span></li>
<li>Presentation Karaoke</li>
<li>Emoji Archaeology</li>
<li>Human Language Wats </li>
</ul>
<h3 id="conference-close">Conference Close</h3>
<p>All good thing must come to an end, but excellent news that <a href="https://lca2018.org/">LCA 2018</a> will be held for the 3rd time in Sydney from 22-26 January 2018.</p>
<p><img alt="" class="image-7 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2mFUQLUoAAsEeJ.jpg:large" style="width: 262px; height: 175px; float: right;" />The fund-raising for <a href="http://outreachy.org">Outreachy</a> had achieved enough to fund two interns, but wasn't quite enough for three. Thanks to Martin (madduck) Krafft, and a quick work with a borrowed hat, we exceeded AUD $28000, enough to fund 3 interns which was outstanding and over 3 times the original target.</p>
<h3 id="friday-sessions-to-watch-later">Friday Sessions to Watch Later</h3>
<ul>
<li>Adventures in laptop battery hacking Matthew Chapman</li>
<li>My personal fight against the modern laptop Hamish Coleman</li>
<li>Getting into the Rusty Bucket: Lessons from Integrating Rust with Existing C William Brown</li>
<li>The proper care and feeding of communities and carnivorous plants Rikki Endsley</li>
<li>Continuously Delivering Security in the Cloud Casey West</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="image-credits">Image Credits</h2>
<ul>
<li><span>Brett James Thursday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsuperroach%2Falbums%2F72157679336942295" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/albums/72157679336942295</a></li>
<li><span>Brett James Friday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsuperroach%2Falbums%2F72157675724783773" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/albums/72157675724783773</a></li>
<li><span>Simon Lyall Thursday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsimonlyall%2Falbums%2F72157675600468404" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/albums/72157675600468404</a></li>
<li><span>Simon Lyall Friday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsimonlyall%2Falbums%2F72157679274957156" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/albums/72157679274957156</a></li>
</ul>
<hr/><p>This article originally appeared on
<a href="http://community.redhat.com/">community.redhat.com</a>.
Follow the community on Twitter at
<a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen">@redhatopen</a>, and find us on
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts">Google+</a>.</p>
Down in Taz-Mania--Red Hat at LCA 2017 Hobart Part IIhttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/02/lca-part-2/2017-02-13T13:01:54-05:002017-02-13T13:36:52-05:00Steven Ellis<p><img alt="Tuz logo" width="125" height="125" src="/images/blog/lca2017/tuz.png?1489516001" /> For some background I recommend you <a href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/02/lca-part-1/">catch the earlier posting</a>.</p>
<p>The conference had previously been held in Hobart back in 2009 and their mascot at the time was Tuz - a Tasmanian devil, wearing a fake beak, pretending to be a penguin. Wikipedia has more details on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux#Tuz_2009">Tuz</a> and the money raised in his honour that year. For 2017 the team had a local artist, Tania Walker, create an updated graphic featuring Tuz for the conference, shown at left.</p>
<p></p>
<h2 id="day-2---tuesday-17th-january">Day 2 - Tuesday 17th January</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/31562457443/in/album-72157677555902491/"><img alt="Pia Waugh" class="image-2 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/267/31562457443_60fc520c71_b.jpg" style="width: 277px; height: 185px; float: right;" /></a>Kicking off the day our Keynote presenter was <a href="http://pipka.org/standard-bio/">Pia Waugh</a>. Pia is well known in the local and regional Open Source community as a former Linux Australia president, organizer of linux.conf.au 2007, starting Gov Hack in Australia amongst other achievements.</p>
<p>For a detailed write up of her talk <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/108/">Choose Your Own Adventure, Please!</a> I'd recommend the LWN article, Simon Lyall's Blog or catch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6IqGuxCKa8">video recording</a>.</p>
<ul><li><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/108/">http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/108/</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6IqGuxCKa8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6IqGuxCKa8</a></li>
<li><a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/711804/">LWN Write Up</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2017/01/linux-conf-au-2017-tuesday-keynote-pia-waugh/">Simon Lyall's blog</a></li>
</ul>
<p>One aspect of linux.conf.au is that each year bring a fresh team and some changes to the program and format. For Tuesday we got some new miniconfs that took up most of my day <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/5/">Security and Privacy</a> and <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/11/">Law and Policy</a>.</p>
<p><img alt="" class="image-3 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/684/32325265466_d2dec30c19_b.jpg" style="width: 239px; height: 179px; float: right;" />To allow for a more open discussion the Fishbowl session (right) on <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/173/">GPL Compliance</a> that Karen Sandler hosted in the Privacy miniconf wasn't streamed or recorded. It did provide some very interesting perspectives on how to approach open source licenses, and the format was an excellent way to allow for a range of contributors.</p>
<p>As usual the <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/2/">Open Hardware</a> miniconf was oversubscribed and had a waitlist. In-fact hardware hacking and IoT was a major theme for the 2017 conference.</p>
<p>This year the <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/10/">Community Leadership Summit</a> was lucky to have <a href="https://twitter.com/vmbrasseur">Vikki Brasseur</a> as its co-ordinator/facilitator and a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXITFkxslhU">summary video</a> of the discussion from the day is available for streaming</p>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/31512897624/in/album-72157679331149816/"><img alt="CLSx @ LCA" class="image-6 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/512/31512897624_6c0be277ae_b.jpg" style="width: 227px; height: 170px; float: right;" /></a>Some of the attendees were even treated to a little dolphin watching from the board-walk outside the venue. If anyone has photos they can share please reach out.</p>
<p>Tuesday evening had no planned social events so a great chance to catch up with old friends and make some new ones in Hobart.</p>
<h2 id="day-3---wednesday-18th-january">Day 3 - Wednesday 18th January</h2>
<p><img alt="Dan LCA 2017" class="image-5 j-img-floatend jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/704/32243625832_80cd9a1ed3_b.jpg" style="width: 286px; height: 191px; float: right;" />Dan Callahan's keynote "<span class=""><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/105/">Designing for Failure</a>" (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dDGkLHOldw">video</a>) </span>presented a perspective on how to end or move away from an Open Source Project, how to deal wiith failure. His focus was on the Persona identity project and Mozilla's learnings on how the project failed to meet its goals, and how they then closed down the project. It also included some amazing fire imagery that lives in the public Domain c/o the US Govt.</p>
<p><span>For further coverage as ever see the excellent LWN Article - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Flwn.net%2FArticles%2F711912%2F" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lwn.net/Articles/711912/</a></p>
<p>After the break we rocked into the formal program for 2017 with a great breadth of content. There are always multiple sessions you want to see so the quality of the video recordings from the <a href="http://www.nextdayvideo.com/">Next Day Video</a> team, and their volunteers, makes life a little easier.</p>
<p><span>First up was Jack Moffitt covering <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/63/">Servo Architecture: Safety and Performance </a>(<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an5abNFba4Q">video</a>)</span><span>. It was really interesting to hear about the benefits of developing in Rust, and how that translates into a more stable and secure browser environment. I liked their pragmatic of trying to bring as many benefits as possible back into Firefox rather than purely focussing on a next generation browser that may take many years to gain popularity.</span></p>
<p>Next up was <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/100/">The Internet of Houses: Whare Hauora</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaRjThUGXLE">video</a>)&lt;/span&gt;<span> with Brenda Wallace and Amber Craig. Hearing Brenda's journey to provide a healthy environment for her own family and then, with Amber and Hiria, translating that into a Charity and Open Source Project than could benefit many New Zealanders was inspiring. The project has developed a low cost temperature and humidity sensor platform to help people monitor the health of their home. With a large number of poorly heated or insulated rental and state housing in NZ this data can help change behaviours, plus improve the health for a considerable part of the population.</span></p>
<p><span>This project has global potential, with interest already from a number of delegates wanting to replicate this within their own communities. If you want to know more see </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwharehauora.nz%2F" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://wharehauora.nz/</a></p>
<p><br /><span>After a wonderfully catered lunch by the Wrest Point team choosing sessions wasn't any easier. I decided on Daniel Axtens session <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/81/">400,000 ephemeral containers: testing entire ecosystems with Docker</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7wSqOQeGhA">video</a>)</span><span>. It proposed an interesting approach of using Docker containers to rapidly test the entire Python, Ruby, Node.js package ecosystem on OpenPower. In some respects the approach is a little "brute force", but I loved how simple it was to perform a basic validation. As a community we need to better acknowledge that there are other architectures outside of x86.</span></p>
<p><span>LCA regular Stewart Smith gives interesting and entertaining talk, plus I have a soft spot for OpenPower, so was intrigued by <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/66/">Organizational Change: Challenges in shipping open source firmware</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JngZkC-TVHc">video</a>)</span><span>. The challenges of working in the multi-vendor ecosystem with many different bug trackers and convincing traditionally proprietary vendors how to work upstream was an interesting journey. At the end Stewart provided a reading list I'll need to dip into. This is a great talk if you're trying to bridge Open Source development and collaboration into largely proprietary organisations.</span></p>
<p><br /><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/32243631442/in/album-72157677592235411/"><img alt="" class="j-img-floatend image-8 jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/570/32243631442_39ea2dd052_b.jpg" style="width: 246px; height: 164px; float: right;" /></a>Post afternoon tea was the worst conflict of any session. I wanted to see all 6 talks. I decided on the <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/67/">A tour of the ARM architecture and its Linux support</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNol7fRGo2E">video</a>) </span><span>by Thomas Petazzoni as I'd worked on ARM development back in the late 90s and still hack on the platform occasionally. For anyone who needs a baseline on ARM SoCs vs Architecture to better understand the ARM ecosystem this is a great introductory talk. Sadly I'd personally covered a lot of this ground before, but for anyone with less experience this would be a great session.</span></p>
<p><br /><span>The last session of the day before the evening social was a little better with only 3 of the sessions marked as must see. I've known Andrew Ruthven for many years as we both hack on MythTV and Andrew was LCA conference chair back in 2010 for Wellington. Andrews <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/76/">Open Compute Project down under</a> </span> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfmMZ6wuF30">video</a>) <span>session makes for a great Open Compute primer and covered some of the challenges of scaling the Open Compute approach down to suit the AU or NZ markets.</span></p>
<h3 id="sessions-for-later-watching">Sessions for Later Watching</h3>
<ul>
<li><span> <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/77/">The kernel report</a> Jonathan Corbet</span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/103/">Listening to the Needs of Your Global Open Source Community</a> Elizabeth K. Joseph </span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/25/">The Future of the Linux Page Cache</a> Matthew Wilcox </span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/73/">JavaScript is Awe-ful</a> Katie McLaughlin</span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/53/">Why haven't you licensed your project?</a> Richard Fontana</span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/36/">Challenges when Scaling: Continued adventures in Swift's sharding </a>Matthew Oliver </span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/42/">Drink from the firehose: release-monitoring.org</a> <a class="jive_macro jive_macro_user" href="/people/ncoghlan" jivemacro="user" ___default_attr="7346" _title="Nick Coghlan" data-orig-content="Nick Coghlan">Nick Coghlan</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/37/">Handle Conflict, Like a Boss!</a> Deb Nicholson</span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/169/">The dangerous, exquisite art of safely handing user-uploaded files</a>Tom Eastman</span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/16/">Automate your home with MQTT</a> Alastair D'Silva </span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/65/">ChaosKey To Production</a> Keith Packard</span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/61">Progress in the Alliance for Open Media</a> Timothy B. Terriberry </span></li>
</ul>
<p><span>Videos can be found under the LCA 2017 YouTube channel - <a class="link-titled" href="https://www.youtube.com/user/linuxconfau2017/videos" title="https://www.youtube.com/user/linuxconfau2017/videos">linux.conf.au 2017 – Hobart, Tasmania - YouTube</a> </span></p>
<h3 id="special-mention">Special Mention</h3>
<p><span> <a href="http://lca2017.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/80/">Ada ❤️ Lace</a> - <a href="https://twitter.com/natdudley">Nat Dudley</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4BNwBwYXw">video</a>)</span><span> </span><br /><span>Nat was a first time attendee and speaker for linux.conf.au and mentioned to me that in part she'd only submitted her talk as a way to persuade a friend to submit a talk. I heard amazing feedback on social media on using the "lens of knitting" to look at early coding, including encoding messages in the war. Definitely one for later watching. </span></p>
<h2 id="penguin-dinner">Penguin Dinner</h2>
<p>The evening closed with the conference "Penguin Dinner" outside in the Wrest Point gardens. A great chance to socialise, and I can't say there are many conferences were all of your Keynote Speakers turn up for the conference sessions and dinner events.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/31573995623/in/album-72157677826905830/"><img alt="" class="j-img-floatstart image-9 jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/604/31573995623_5ab34c9387_b.jpg" style="width: 354px; height: 265px; float: left;" /></a><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/31583002653/in/album-72157677592235411/"><img alt="" class="j-img-floatend image-10 jive-image" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/700/31583002653_a069a8960d_b.jpg" style="width: 394px; height: 263px; float: right;" /></a></p>
<h2 id="image-credits">Image Credits</h2>
<ul>
<li><span>Brett James Tuesday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsuperroach%2Fsets%2F72157677555902491" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/sets/72157677555902491</a></li>
<li><span>Brett James Wednesday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsuperroach%2Fsets%2F72157677592235411" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/superroach/sets/72157677592235411</a></li>
<li><span>Simon Lyall Tuesday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsimonlyall%2Fsets%2F72157675515543934" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/sets/72157675515543934</a></li>
<li><span>Simon Lyall Wednesday - </span><a class="jive-link-external-small" href="/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsimonlyall%2Fsets%2F72157677826905830" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonlyall/sets/72157677826905830</a></li>
<li>Elizabeth K. Joseph Wednesday - <a class="link-titled" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157679331149816" title="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157679331149816">Hobart linux.conf.au 2017 | Flickr</a></li>
</ul>
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Fedora Goes to FOSDEMhttp://community.redhat.com/blog/2017/02/fedora-goes-to-fosdem/2017-02-10T10:07:54-05:002017-02-10T10:18:20-05:00Brian Exelbierd<p><img alt="Fedora logo" width="125" height="125" src="/images/blog/fedora-logo.png?1478100396" /> I had the pleasure of going to FOSDEM this year and the annual spectacular didn't cease to deliver. During this year's conference, my second FOSDEM, I worked with <a href="https://www.twitter.com/bstinsonmhk">Brian Stinson</a> of CentOS fame to produce the <a href="https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/distributions/">Distributions Devroom</a>.</p>
<p>FOSDEM gets busier every year and the Distributions Devroom was no different. For almost the entire day, the room was filled and we were routinely turning people away for lack of seats. The few times there was a dip in attendance seemed tied to the topic and not the time. This leads us to believe that the program was well balanced and represented the current thoughts and interests around distributions.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The <a href="https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/distributions/">schedule</a> contained:</p>
<ul>
<li>A talk about rolling releases replacing timed releases</li>
<li>A rapid-fire list of the goals that were accomplished to bring Homebrew to 1.0.0</li>
<li>The folks from Mageia helping us understand what it takes to fork a major distribution and (re)build the community around it</li>
<li>The process by which SUSE documents the distribution</li>
<li>How OSBS and OpenQA power distribution building and release preparation</li>
<li>A talk on the continuous build process used by RDO, an OpenStack distribution</li>
<li>How Fedora is redefining the distribution with a core + modules concept called modularity</li>
<li>Using btrfs, an overlay file system, for transactional updates of rolling releases</li>
<li>Uow using musl libc has improved Alpine and code in general</li>
<li>Thinking about the installation of language specific packages, in this case npm, using the functional model from the Nix package manager</li>
<li>A brief history of the packaging challenges of MySQL and MariaDB</li>
<li>Expanding the definition of source code include more than just what may come initially to mind, including an interesting discussion around the data sets used to pre-train neural networks</li>
<li>Using traditional Linux distributions, in this case Fedora, to power Internet of Things (IoT) devices and gateways</li>
</ul>
<p>I won't write about all of the talks and instead encourage you to check out the recordings of each talk.
Our speakers were wearing a microphone so I believe you will find the audio quite good when accompanied by the video.</p>
<p>Because of my affiliation with Fedora, I strongly encourage you to <a href="https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/modularity_and_generational_core/">watch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/adsamalik">Adam Šamalík</a> and Petr Šabata talking about <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Modularity">Fedora Modularity</a>.</p>
<p>As I understand it, Modularity creates a structure to sensibly change the speed at which the distribution rolls.
Parts of the operating system which need to stay stable will behave as though they were in a traditional timed release or Long Term Support (LTS) style distribution.</p>
<p>Conversely, parts of the operating system that need to move faster, perhaps a language stack, can move like they are part of a rolling release distribution.</p>
<p>I am excited that we will be able to play with this concept in the upcoming release of Fedora, Fedora 26.</p>
<p>I also hope you'll take the time to watch <a href="https://twitter.com/nullr0ute">Peter Robinson's</a> presentation on <a href="https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/generic_distro_iot/">using Fedora for IoT</a>. Beyond my desire to see you use Fedora, Peter makes some great points about how the challenges that the IoT space is trying to solve have often already been solved in traditional Linux distributions. Using these solutions becomes much easier now that options like <a href="https://getfedora.org/en/atomic/">Fedora Atomic</a> have become available.</p>
<p>Fedora Atomic's OSTree-based atomic updates provide a method of the safe upgrade of IoT devices which can easily rollback to a previous state if they fail a health check. This should prevent most causes of "bricked" devices.
Additionally the work being done for containers and Atomic have already resulted in reduced install sizes that are only getting smaller. This makes these use of a robust mainline platform that will ease development more tenable on the deployment and operations sides.</p>
<p>Day two of my FOSDEM adventure was shorter, but just as exciting. I woke up with, as a friend would put it, "the tireds."
This caused me to sleep in and try to recover my strength. In the afternoon I hung out at the <a href="https://twitter.com/fedora/status/827829638588153857">Fedora booth</a> with some of our fantastic ambassadors.
It was great to hear what people were asking about.</p>
<p>I also took the opportunity to do what my colleague <a href="https://twitter.com/rbowen">Rich Bowen</a> would call "ambush interviews." I used an audio recorder to record some brief interviews with people about Fedora and FOSDEM.
Assuming I didn't make any horrible mistakes and can figure out how to use Audacity, I hope to post them soon.</p>
<p>Overall, FOSDEM remains an important place to network with the Open Source community. To paraphrase one of my interviewees, at FOSDEM you don't just discuss Open Source, you discuss it with the actual upstream developers.
A colleague added to this with an interesting observation, the "hallway track" at FOSDEM makes it compelling enough to come to on its own.</p>
<p>It seems that those of us who are more experienced in Open Source come for that and the newer members of our growing community find the tracks live (as opposed to recorded the way I will enjoy most of them) to be a huge value because they can identify the folks they want to network with in the future.</p>
<p>While it is crowded, chaotic and a masterful bit of magical orchestration to pull off, I strongly encourage you to consider adding FOSDEM to your travel schedule next year. And since you're already going to Brussels, plan to drop in on <a href="https://www.devconf.cz">DevConf.cz</a> the fantastic developer conference in my hometown of Brno, Czech Republic.
Let me know you're coming and we can grab a beverage of your choice together!</p>
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